Where the People Meet

Lunch with my bud at Junior's Diner in Brooklyn

Turkey Reuben on Rye for me with lots of mustard and sauce on the side.  Of course the complimentary condiments of coleslaw, pickled beets and pickles, side of fries.  My bud got the Grilled Cheese which looked extra fluffy. 

The great thing about a real diner, is that it promotes lively conversation, as does a good bud.  Somehow this hectic atmosphere invigorates and lends itself to the movie-like experience I crave about New York.  Plus actual conversation facing a live person cannot be beat.  I don't know how many times a text response has been misinterpreted lately but climbing out of the misunderstood hole is harder than you'd think.  Pick up the phone and talk in person you might scream.  It sounds so easy!  But like many millennials, I've developed a phobia-like fear of phoning.  Being able to form sentences on the spot that are consistent with the normalities of society, is more than I am capable of.  I can't talk right, in other words, unless I can see your mouth and your expressions.  Face Time?  No thanks, that's some hoo-doo witchery to me. 

Come As You Are

Freddy's Food Truck tacos along with my homemade mexican rice.  I met my local vendor halfway by providing the side to a great lunch.  

Mike's Coffee Shop Counter Breakfast

For breakfast, we graduated to counter eating at the local diner.  This is an honor you feel comfortable accepting once you've patronized the establishment a number of times and have made nice with the waiters.  There we witnessed a very New York racist-esque banter between a fellow counter eater and the busboy in the humorous way that can only be funny when you witness it first hand.  New York must remember that which made it so very special was the ability for each individual of any race to speak to another in a brutally frank way with humor and slightly muffled love, in order to release a bit of the steam building in the melting pot, enough to relax and live with each other.  Trusting, a bit of rubbing will not break the other. This is of course most common in the blue collar working communities where we are put together in trains, work environments, and eateries.

You Can't Make Old Friends

The best smiles are the real ones!

Lunch with my bud at Junior's of all places.  Girl likes diners and grilled sandwiches, what can I say.  I'm not the amazing host that I would like to be but I know you give the people what they want.  If I recall the weather was sweltering heat with high humidity that day.  Unrelentless sun.  When you have to say, dang summer, you scary!  

I got the Turkey Reuben with thick cut fries and we we scored a good window seat in the back.

I believe H got the Swiss Melt.  They always give pickled beets, pickles and coleslaw to each table.  I hope that never goes away, like the free chips and salsa at Mexican restaurants did. 

But we cooled off in the AC, sat in the park a bit before melting and then hightailed it back to my place for some cold watermelon and an incredible chat.  I miss socializing so much but do it so little.  It is schedules and energy driving the downslope in outings but something definitely happened after COVID that leaves me even more apt to spend time alone.   This is not without logic.  I'm less apt to jump on the subway at night as every ride comes with some potentially violent lunatics.  Women are vulnerable and it seems like everyone that gets attacked by a machete or pushed off the tracks is my age.  It's a drag to go to Manhattan now.  It gives me bad juju.  I love my Brooklyn neighborhoods but it is healthy to get out and about.  When you spend time with someone you know and feel so at ease with, that's when it becomes apparent that you're missing out.  

Believe Me When I Tell You

Diner Split lunch - Turkey Burger Deluxe and a Patty Melt with Fries and Coleslaw

When they get it right, there is nothing better than diner food.  The crisp on the hottest of salted fries, the perfect mound of coleslaw and the pickle wedge.  A Patty Melt is the perfect lunch that you can order on a trip as far as your mind goes.  Unfortunately, for your health, the choice would be much different.  This had me wondering, what kinds of lunch meals could compete with the classic burger and fries platter, for work, that could please the mind and the body.  I am tasking myself with creating easy, amazing boxed lunches for work that feel the way this plate did but with healthier ingredients. 

Did you ever make yourself a promise?  If you did, did you ever consider who is the you, making the promise and who is the you, you're making it to? And if you don't follow-through, who is to blame and who is the victim, if anyone?  And if it really is all just thoughts, as many believe, do the results matter or make any difference in the world whatsoever?  I like to believe the answer is yes. 

So Close, So Close and Yet So Far

I went to the diner to meet my bud and chat about life, enjoy lively conversation and address a topic that had been bothering me.  I was wrestling with one I knew would not be popular, the cancelling of Ryan Adams.  There were rumblings of this upcoming documentary but Leaving Neverland had not aired yet so Ryan was up next on the chopping block.  Who knew what was at our doorstep.
This was a few weeks ago and my first thoughts were just to protect the music, as if I was leaving a burning building and had to prioritize.  I felt protective of that music, and of the songwriter, the musician.  But then the actual man, I figured would need to deal with his own issues.  This was a personal matter, everyone would see it that way.

And then the last month happened.  It didn't happen to me, it happened to that man.  But the musician and the music also took quite the blow. I find the whole concept of erasing people completely barbaric and beneath us.  I don't see the value or benefit of being vindictive.

This New York Times story on canceling people is a good read but the best thing I got out of it was the attached video commentary.  She makes valuable points.  And btw her Michael Jackson video I disagreed with but again her points were well made.  We just differ on opinion.

This canceling goes along with our desire to sweep bad people under the societal rug. Out of sight out of mind. Look how poorly it's working in our prison system.  And if you believe we are all one like I do, this is just us looking in the mirror and not being able to cope or forgive ourselves for our own weaknesses.  To own up to the fact that we all do bad things from time to time.  Demonizing the perpetrators only helps convince ourselves that there is miles of distance between us and them.  When in reality as she mentions, we are often both in the span of our lifetime.
In her overview of this subject Kimberly Foster takes on the problems of adopting this ethos as a society.  How change is never off the table if one is alive.  How no one should be thrown away. She speaks of restorative justice, which you would think would be a top ranking idea for enlightened individuals.  And in my opinion the biggest disservice we do to ourselves is to believe we have the right to take another person's liberties away.  That anyone must prove to us that they are worthy to have a career that they've already earned.  Just because it can be done, doesn't make it right. 
I have struggled to let this topic go.  It has somehow gotten beneath my skin.  This man, albeit flawed if the stories are true and I don't doubt they are, was stripped of his life's work in a sense overnight.  For me, this was like watching a neighbor get shot on the street.  And then realizing these shootings have gone on now for awhile.  You knew shooting a man in cold blood is wrong no matter what he did. How is it possible that this has transpired without dispute?  And then Michael Jackson was next.

Yes it is time to wake up and do something different about men's treatment of women in many cases, but this is not it.  We are going in the wrong direction.  The anger Ms. Foster speaks of is real.  The crap that women have endured is monumental in working environments and its disappointing when it's someone who's work you admire.  Let's act rationally.  Let's own our own crimes too.  This time the public has committed the violation.
another great article on the subject
I could not help but connect this story to another I am studying.  This notion that perhaps other humans had developed to a certain level several times on this earth but always somehow offed themselves or were taken out by some means, only to start from scratch again and again.  On one hand if you look at the last 6000 years it appears we've made stellar advances in science and inventions. That we really evolved quickly in relation to time.  How it seemed for a minute we were right on the brink of turning a major page in our evolution.  And then all the sudden it feels like we're just spinning faster. Nothing feels like it's moving forward.  Maybe for all the attempts, progression was always just a few generations away.